


Howl

by icarus_chained



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Comrades in Arms, Gen, Hope, Stream of Consciousness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha, as she loves them, for all the red that runs between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Howl

**Author's Note:**

> ... I am on the crashing edge of exhaustion, could not sleep, and ... this? This happened. *spreads hands helplessly*

Children dreamed of flying. All of them. It was ... the way they were made.

She had dreamed too, once. She had dreamed of soaring, dreamed of power and freedom and flight. Of a means of escape, of a means of attack, of a vantage from which none could touch her. She had dreamed. As a child, she had dreamed.

And as a woman. In all her years, in all her pains, while red crawled merciless and worm-ridden across the pages of her ledger, she had never ... never not dreamed. In the cold, and the red, still she had dreamed of flying.

And then, by some means, she had flown.

Not dreamed. She had _flown_. She had held power, held escape, held vantage. She had found freedom, or some of it, above the loops of debt that did not bind so tightly as she had once believed they must. She had found ... something. Intangible, untouchable. Offered in lieu of death, in one stretched moment, accepted because even then, even _then_ , she had dreamed enough to try, enough to move and run and _not die_. She had accepted, and been offered, and through the looping wires of what was owed she had found this thing. Whatever it was. This flight.

Them. Always, them. SHIELD first, Clint first, but then _them_. Something in the base of them, something in the nature of them. They were flight. They were fire and power and vantage and flight. They were freedom, and strength, and they were _hers_. In her, around her, part of her. All the things they were.

Silent wings of faith in the loosing of an arrow. The thrust of strength to buoy her up, in the man the ice could not kill. The laughing trust of her male echo, clad in armour only differing in look, not in nature. The bright, elemental power of a god who saw her not beneath him.

And the monster. Yes, that too. Hers too, part of her too. The price and pain, because nothing was free, no vantage untouched, because something pierced your palm with every outstretched hand. The monster too, the thing she had remembered, the crawling echo of failure and pain.

But with it, in it, the knowing of eyes that knew it too. That had failed too, that needed too, that felt the bite beneath their skin with every touch of a hand against theirs. The eyes that watched her, soft and sad, and _knew_. The bite of a bloodied palm against hers, and the touch of a black, echoing knowledge that oddly buoyed them up between them.

They were hers, they had been hers, for one howling, echoing moment, and it had been power and flight and a freedom like nothing she'd ever known. Out beyond limits, beyond means, out beyond all they had ever trained for. In freefall, not falling, and for every burn of breath in her lungs, every jolt of pain and stretch of exhaustion from a body battered to failing, she had been ... _free_. A dance of death with no tomorrow, and for every step she made ready to fall, they had been there. To catch, to throw, to keep aloft. To sear obstacles from her path, and fall within her reach to defend. They had held between the six of them a power to founder armies, and she had not been superfluous, she had not been entrapped, she had been _lifted_.

She had dreamed, as a child. All children did. She dreamed enough, not long ago, a lifetime, to grip to a silent, faithful palm, and run not into the 'brace of death. She had dreamed enough to try, dreamed enough to move, dreamed enough to run and fight and leap where there could not possibly be hope of answer. She had dreamed enough, moments ago, aeons, to vault on someone else's strength, and take desperation to the skies for their sake.

They were hers. _Hers_. The power and the pain, the trust and the fear, the freedom and the cage. For one moment or thousands, for the space of one fall or the width of one life. They were hers, they had to be, this dream was not hers alone. She had not been the only one to fly.

She had dreamed, for so long, when she should not. She had, too, in the secret places, also loved. Not as she thought love was meant, not as she thought love was spoken. Something harder, fiercer, like the piercing of a bloodied palm. The grip of a hand where there was no hope, the break of a hand where there was no mercy, the sundering of a heart where there was no trust. The living of a life, where there was only death.

She had loved, for every dream. She loved still, for this one. For _them_. She loved for the power that was hers as well as theirs. She loved for the pain that was echoed through the falling of them, all five, all six. She loved for the trust that spun fragile over voids, for silent faith and laughing pain, for the power to sunder worlds or bear her up. 

She loved, for that breath they had shared, for that flight they had fallen, for every burn of breath that was not death and the breaking of an army for their will. She loved for red that was not washed but seared away. She loved for the quiet knowledge in six pairs of bloodstained hands, and for the piercing in each palm for each hand they held defiantly outstretched. She loved for glory and knowledge and pain and punishment, for past sins and past triumphs, for each moment they had dreamed of flight, each moment they had run not into the 'brace of death. For each moment they had lived, as she had lived, for each moment they had chosen not to die.

She loved for the arrow, loved for the flight. Loved for the shield, loved for the fight. She loved because they had flown, because she had flown with them and for them, because no dream had ever matched them, and nothing had ever warned, nothing had ever prepared, and nothing could ever hope to equal. She loved for the moment when there had been nothing to do but fall, when for once and for first, she had not dreamed, but _done_.

She loved them, for they were hers. She loved them, and she would kill them on the morrow, for that was what she was, that was the grief and the pain and the winding wires of debt, when the dreaming broke and the red crept back across the world. She loved them because they were never safe, not from her, not for her, and there was not a one of them that did not know.

She loved, because in this world of howling winds and impossible falls and the piercing of outstretched palms, there was not one who would not fly regardless, and run until there was no such thing as running.

She loved because she could not run, loved because she could not fall, loved for the pressing of five broken palms to hers, and the knowing they had found there.

Not dreaming. No more, never that. The vault into infinity, the leap across the void. This was no more a dream, and she was no more a child. She would kill them on the morrow, as she had to, as they fell. She would kill as she believed, as she had lived, and when they broke her beneath them, it would be with grief, and that same heart-torn love in their breast.

She loved, and loved, and did not fall. She was not a child, and this was not a dream. And they, they five, to a man ... were hers. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, the blood-bond of a broken palm and the wired rings of debt. She loved, and was loved. She broke, and was broken. She bore up, and was borne. She fell, and they fell with her.

And she knew, to see five hearts and hold five hands, in the red-swept secret places of her heart, that no dream of flight had ever held this terror, or this love. In the howl beyond limits, where the red slipped softly over joined hands ... there was no place, for dreaming. What once was done, was done forever, and they none of them did not know.

But still, but still. For every moment they were hers, for every breath and every sorrow, and every moment that was not death ... what need had she, now, to dream?

None. She had none. For instead ... she would _fly_.


End file.
